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About Us
The Wikia Community Today 'Wikia' operates the world’s largest network of collaboratively published video game, entertainment, and consumer interest content on the web through a trusted and customizable platform designed to help people share what they know and love. Our knowledgeable and devoted users create more than 600 new wikis every day. Currently, we maintain over 200,000 wiki sites across an impressive array of subjects spanning virtually all aspects of popular culture: from video games, TV and movies to sports, food, fashion, and current events. Wikia Video Games is the top global video game publisher on the Web today and is home to some of the largest video game communities. The most trafficked titles include Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Fallout and Runescape. Visitors to the Wikia Gaming hub can choose from more than 65,000 game wikis and 2.48 million pages of gaming content, which average more than 25,000 user edits each day. Wikia Entertainment grew 90% between 2010 and 2011, making us the fastest growing US entertainment site in the world. Hundreds of super communities collaborate around Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games. Meanwhile, users maintain deep libraries like Marvel Database and the Music Lyrics site. Wikia Entertainment is the ultimate hub for influential entertainment fans seeking to create and collaborate around deep, curated content on their favorite shows, movies, games and more. Beyond video games and entertainment, Wikia satisfies a diverse range of people and interests with comprehensive communities for genealogy, ice hockey, recipes, children's books -- even jobs in education. Wikia offers something special for everyone. Our Mission Wikia’s philosophy and publishing platform is designed to: As a collaborative media company, Wikia aims to: Bring out the “expert” in everyone. The collaborative media movement shows us that many minds are better than one. Wikia provides a collaborative publishing platform on which everyone - really, everyone - can share their passion and knowledge on subjects that range video games, movies, TV and books to cars, cooking, crafts, education, and travel. By doing so, we unleash the inner expert in everybody. Enable personal and collective creativity. Our communities assemble on their own initiative and dwell as living and breathing entertainment destinations -- interconnected through a shared desire to create, collaborate, learn and inform. We see collaboration intersect with influence around the idea that the more you learn, the more you have to share. That magnetic appeal makes our users inspiring people to be around and connect with -- and who doesn’t love to be inspired? Distribute rich, original content. Collaboration is what makes Wikia’s content unique. The natural assembly of information by many different people satisfies a huge craving for deep, original and quality content. Wikia fuels that growth with an open platform that attracts people who want to learn and share. Our site supports powerful search engine discovery and complementary curation tools for video, photo, text, quizzes and more. Wikia contributors and readers return again and again for real, useful information -- visiting an average of 4.8 times per month to consume an average of eight pages each visit. Our History Wikia, Inc. began as the collaborative idea of Angela Beesley and Jimmy Wales, creators of the free open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Jimmy and Angela realized that there are many topics that do not fit in a traditional Wikipedia / encyclopedia model — namely pop culture, video games, entertainment, and consumer interest topics like sports, food/drink, travel and more. While Wikia’s business is separate from Wikipedia, the two share MediaWiki technology. Wikia, Inc. was officially founded as a platform for collaborative media publishing in 2006 and continues to operate independently from Wikipedia to this day. Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, London, and Poznan, Poland, Wikia continues to improve its collaborative publishing experience based on the feedback of its global member base. In the past year, Wikia has rolled out new features like Related Videos, a new mobile skin, and stand-alone video game guides to further enhance communities and content. Infinite and Interconnected In case you’re wondering about the creative on our pages - you know, all of the dots and lines? It’s our way of representing the infinite potential of collaborative content being created on Wikia. The dots are nodes of content and people. They are woven together by lines to represent connections and sharing. The colors convey the wide variety of topics. We call it our fractal. It’s community first at Wikia but if you’re curious, meet our executive team: Wikia’s Chief Executive Officer, Craig Palmer is leading the web’s largest network of collaboratively-published entertainment, gaming, and lifestyle content into its next phase, with an emphasis on expanding efficient processes and rapidly scaling Wikia’s community, marketing reach, and revenue. Craig has more than 25 years of industry experience, leading several diverse companies to success. Most recently, he was the President and CEO of Gracenote, a digital media pioneer whose content and technology is embedded in almost all top digital media brands. During Craig’s eight years of leadership, Gracenote enjoyed a dramatic increase in revenue, employee growth, international scope, and industry footprint. The company was purchased by Sony in 2008 for $260 million. Prior to Gracenote, Craig led Aspect Development, a market-leading supply chain management company, through an IPO and eventual sale for over $9 billion in 2000 – at that time, the largest software sale in history. ---- Bob Huseby is Senior Vice President and Publisher at Wikia, managing international advertising sales and business development . Bob connects consumer brands with the Wikia community, helping marketers engage with the site’s 50 million global unique visitors per month and 200,000+ communities. Prior to joining Wikia in 2009, Bob was the senior vice president and publisher at IDG Entertainment (IDGE), where he oversaw all print and online business operations including advertising sales, audience and business development, circulation and marketing for GamePro magazine and the IDGE Online Network. Previously, Bob was the Vice President of advertising sales at GameDAILY, a video game content syndication company, later acquired by AOL. His twenty years of media and publishing experience include executive and senior sales management positions at LookSmart, Dialpad Communications and CNET Networks, where Bob got his start in the games industry working with GameCenter.com. ---- Sara Wood is Senior Vice President of Product at Wikia. Sara develops and articulates Wikia’s product vision and strategy — keeping Wikia at the forefront of the fast-growing collaborative publishing market. She also heads Wikia’s Design department and sets design standards for the site. Prior to joining Wikia, Sara ran Product at Flickr, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), was Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Swivel and Vice President of Product at Salon.com. She was also a Director of Product at Harvard and has served as a Department Chief at the United Nations/World Health Organization for many years. The combination of open data, open access and open source is one of the things she likes talking about the most, and why she loves her job at Wikia. ---- Bill Kaufman, who joined Wikia in 2006, leads the Community Support and Development team, which works directly with Wikia editors and readers. His team's close contact with the user community provides valuable insight that helps Wikia create the best collaborative publishing experience possible. Bill also heads Wikia's international, revenue optimization, recruiting and human resources operations. Prior to joining Wikia, Bill was a consultant to Wells Fargo's internet banking group as well as the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) -- the nation's largest operator of charter schools. He has also directed operations at E2Open software, managed product development at boats.com, launched an auction platform for Go.com, and helped major brands roll out new products while at Jack Morton Company. The wild, wild west of user generated content and Wikia’s fantastic staff are the reasons Bill loves his role. ---- Mike Schwartz is Wikia’s Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations. Mike’s technical leadership has enabled the site’s dramatic growth by improving the site’s performance and functionality – providing Wikia users with a unique collaborative web experience. Mike has more than 25 years of experience with Silicon Valley start-ups in technical and leadership roles. He has worked on several large-scale web sites, including Infoseek, TypePad and BigTent, and he’s led large-scale automation and infrastructure projects at Opsware, Elemental Security, MokaFive and other companies. Mike was also part of the development teams at web innovators Metaphor, GO and Sun. ---- Jennifer leads Wikia’s effort to broaden brand awareness and expand the company’s portfolio of media content sites. At Wikia, Jennifer is helping to define an audience of next generation editors and collaborative curation techniques that will shape the way people create and consume content. Jennifer has a successful track record of conceptualizing and executing large-scale integrated marketing campaigns for music, sports, and entertainment fan communities as well as driving revenue for multi-brand media portfolios. She’s built brands and expanded market presence for leading media companies including AOL, Time Warner, Veoh, SIRIUS XM, and the LA Times. ---- Bud Austin is the Interim Chief Financial Officer at Wikia. Bud is responsible for overseeing Wikia’s financial affairs, including establishing policies and procedures to encourage scalable growth, managing financial reporting, and assisting the management team in setting strategic goals and objectives. At Kranz & Associates, Bud has managed and directed the financial and administrative affairs of many early-stage technology companies, from initial funding to IPO. Over the past 15 years, he has helped raise more than $100 million in capital for many start-up businesses, including Preview Systems, Gracenote, Hyperic Corporation, SocialText, Inc., and Yelp.com. advertising Press/Latest News Wikia Rolls Out Redesign, 20M Pages Of UGC", April 2012 Wikia Community Wins Grimme Award, June 2011 Wikia Vaults into Quantcast Top 50, June 2011 Fans Prefer Content With Deeper Engagement, December 2010 Wikia Does Not Own Wikileaks Domain Names, December 2010 "Wiki 2.0" Debuts at Digital Hollywood, November 2010 Find more press information. For press inquiries, please email Rachel Carr. Investors Bessemer Venture Partners Omidyar Network Amazon.com Inc. Marc Andreessen Ron Conway Joichi Ito Mitch Kapor Josh Kopelman Gil Penchina Location & Contact Our San Francisco office is located at: 500 3rd St, Suite 405 San Francisco, CA 94107 To contact a member of Wikia staff, please use the .